Aggression and Violent Video Games Essay Example

State University in Ames, and his colleagues looked at how children and ten's video game habits at one time point related to their behavior three to six months later. The research showed that the children exposed more to violent games became more aggressive over time than the ones that were not exposed. The researches took into account how aggressive the kids were before the study was made and still had the same results. It is safe to say, and probably a relief to most that not all children exposed to violent video games will become more violent or aggressive.

Everything has to do with factors. If you take a child who has had a hard upbringing and a child that comes from a stabilized loving home and expose both to violent games which do you think has the higher risk of becoming more aggressive after playing? The obvious answer would be the child with the troubled upbringing. The mind of a child up to its teenaged years is still in development and if it is exposed enough to violence over and over that is what the mind will react to as normal action. There have been many criminal acts in which a young person has been involved.

When the young person involved in the crime committed is a child or a teenager everyone seeks to find the answer to why this young person did what they did. One answer most seem to always find is that the young person was playing violent games prior to committing the crime. Though this may not be true for some cases, it is sadly true in many of them.

Divine Moore was an 18 year old boy who fell victim to the violent game influence. Divine had left three men dead two of which were police officers. As a minor Divine bought a game called Grand Theft Auto, this game is a game that is very high on violence.

In the game you are able to do many law breaking things such as stealing cars at your leisure and killing cops as you wished. Divine played this game all the time for months which led to the killing of three innocent men. Officer Arnold Strickland had brought Divine Moore in on suspicion of stealing a car when he suddenly snapped for no apparent reason and shot and killed three en including Arnold Strickland and fleeing in a stolen police vehicle. Divine Moore said after being caught, "Life is like a video game everybody got to die sometime".

The D. C Sniper shootings are another case in which a young boy is trained by his father how to snipe via a very violent video game in sniper mode. According to police Mr.. Muhammad, the father of the 17 year old sniper shooter, had said that "He got him to practice on an ultra-violent video game in sniper mode to break down his hesitancy to kill". One of the most memorable and awful shootings has to be the Columbine shooting. Two senior students, Eric Harris and Dylan Keyhole were the culprits for the deaths of 12 students and wounding.

Harris had created a site for a game they played often called Doom. In this site a blob was started by Harris, this blob started off as

something innocent Just talking about opinions on parent's and teachers then the blob took a darker turn speaking of causing mischief and the weapons obtained by him and Keyhole. Though the police was notified about the blob and the potential danger it presented, since it then had threats made to students and teachers at Columbine High School, nothing was really done about it. Harris and Keyhole were identified by many as victims of bullying.

Gerald Block, a psychiatrist, has an opinion, he says, "l believe that the students' immersion in video games caused them to feel most gratified while playing in a virtual world". Block also thought that Harris' and Keyhole's personal anger was projected in the video game and then let loose in real life. Daniel Petri was another young boy who killed over a violent video game. Petri, who was 16 at the time, shot and killed his mother and severely wounded his father with a shot to the head. Petri had a snowboarding accident which made him homebound for quite some time, in this time he played a lot of games in especially.

He played up to 18 hours a day becoming addicted to the game. Peptic's parent's were strict in not allowing violent games to be played in their home, his father who was a minister, strongly opposed the playing of Halo 3. Petri snuck out and bought the game behind his parent's' backs but they of course found out and Peptic's father locked the game away in a lock box where he also kept his mm gun. Petri took the key to the lock and took out his game and

with it the mm which e shot his parent's with.

It was rumored that Petri had said he thought his mother was going to reshape as the character did in the game. There may be different views and different opinions on the matter in whether violent video games cause aggression in children, but one thing is clear the facts and cases presented don't lie. There is a truth that not all children who are exposed to violent video games become violent, as stated above there are many factors that come into play, but the proof is there that in most children there was an increase of aggression after playing such games.

There are many signs that let us know if a child is Just a ticking time bomb getting ready to explode yet they get ignored as was the case with the Columbine shooters. Games now come with a rating which tells you which age is appropriate to play that game. Parent's a lot of the time don't pay much attention to these ratings and allow kids younger than the age appropriate to play the game. No matter how you look at it the evidence is clear. The victims of these young killers were just pawns in the minds of these kids that thought they were living a video game letting the violence of the game persuade their actions.